Sweetset Tongue
by Obsessivereader182
Summary: I am sorry to say, but your history books are incorrect, what was documented fact has now become nothing but a simple fairy tail for parents to tell their children at bedtime. Set in the height of the Victorian Era, where you can rise just as easily as fall, were wealth matters and the poor don't, let me tell you the true story of Little Red Riding Hood from those who knew her.


**So this is my first fic so please go easy on me. No flames, but criticism is welcomed and wanted. So please, review, it makes me happy :)**

 **I first thought about writing this in 2011, while trying to pay attention in my science lesson. I had a daydream about a huntsmen and wolf facing each other in a showdown, and lying a little way behind them was girl in red cloak. She was sprawled in the snow, and struggling with not knowing who too root for.**

 **It expanded after I watched the Doctor Who episode** _ **The Crimson Horror**_ **, and then I read** _ **The Phantom of the Opera**_ **which again inspired me just like Disney's** _ **Beauty and the Beast.**_

 **Disclaimer: Charles Perrault, Bros Grimm own Little Riding Hood. I own everything else :)**

March 9th 1877

Millicent

It was a hard birth; it seemed so right up to my last hold on innocent ignorance that I acknowledged the midwife's boisterous and bawdy assistance.

"Not long now...almost there...your child is almost born. Do exactly as I say - do you hear me, madam? - exactly!"

I nodded and drew a strained breath, and clung to the sheets of the bed. The oil lights of the room cast shadows up onto the ceiling. Glaring shapes loomed over head that seemed so surreal to me in this mindless delirium of pain. In the sole, solitary moments of thrusting torture it appeared that to me, there was no one left in the world but me; that I was in my own prison made up eternally of pain.

Finely; there was relief, but also silence. I opened my eyes fearful of what the outcome the night had installed. The midwife's face – rosy with excitement holding a bundle.

I stole a glance at the mass of bloody sheets. Struggling to sit up as I did so, against the damp pillows. Proof that the event did indeed happen and was not a dream so complicated and believable, that one might mistake it for reality. I was about to ask the sex of the infant, when the midwife seeing my expression, saved me the trouble.

"A girl".

The midwife cut the cord, and this should have been the first sign that my daughter was alive, but still drunk with the agony I failed to notice. The blanket was placed, delicately as if she were handling paper-thin china, into the cot beside the bed. The silence was unnerving in my bed chamber. The cot was so near, and yet as clichéd as it sounded so far. I felt anger towards the midwife, who had yet to answer my unspoken question. Was the child stillborn? Still struggling to get up without the assistance of my maids ' _honestly_ ' I thought ' _where had they gone_?' I stole a glance at the cradle. I did not hear the midwife's voice trail away as she disappeared out into the corridor, nor did I see her smile.

The outcome of my union was a doll-sized, blubbery mas of flesh, so pink almost to appear crimson. I had been given the intelligence that all babes when first birthed would be a writhing, angry and screaming thing that would barely be able to open its eyes. Instead I found a still, usually thin and above all quite baby. I do not know how the infant was capable of such an act but here it was. The new-born was as alien to me as a reptile, with eyes that should have been blue, ' _weren't all babes born with blue eyes'_ I thought. I was vaguely aware of footsteps coming up the stairs, but I was also aware of the look in the dark green eyes in front of me. I had never seen such awareness. The eyes were intently on mine, were curiously centred, and she seemed to study me. This couldn't be natural, I had never seen such conciseness in the eyes of any new-born child and I found myself returning her stare. And then she cried, just as the door opened. I have no words to describe the sound that came from my daughter's mouth, or the extraordinary response it conjured in my husband and I.

Whenever I heard the cry of a new-born, I had often thought it to be a toneless, utterly sexless, piercing and irritatingly unattractive. This was none, the sound was one that put me in mind of music, of balls that seem to go on forever. The noise seduced me, softly aching my body with the unrelenting urge to bring the child to my breast and hold her close, forgetting or prohibiting all forms of the social teaching my governess had given me during my girlhood. I was helpless to resist this implicates plea of survival. I paid no head to the form in the open door way, and the moment her flesh touched mine, I felt almost peaceful and oh so motherly, the rules of rank would have never permitted this, and the very idea would repulse many, if not all of society ladies. The thought that they would suckle on their mother and not a nurse maid was a concept that probably be vacant from their heads all their lives and would have no reason to step foot there.

As I held my first child to me, Theodore started to approach. Fleetingly like a rabbit in the meadow he sat down upon the bed sheets, careful to avoid the blood and even more tentatively looked down at the product of our marriage bed. The infant now feed looked up at her father with the same almost frightening awareness that she had given me. The thought that this child, this little girl barely existing for thirty minutes somehow knew that the both of use were her parents was astonishing and at the same time…

"Does she have a name?"

The voice was enough to make the both of us turn our reluctant heads to the door way. Theodore's mother, Athena stood, a black shadow across the high rectangle of the frame. The gold that poured in from the now lit corridor obscured her features but I could tell there was a smirk playing on her lips. She walked forward, her skirts fanned out behind her, the closer she came the more I became aware of the other figures lurking just behind her. No doubt they were Christopher, Theodore's older brother and his wife Martha. As my mother-in law came to us, I was given chance to take in Theodore's appearance. Even before I had married him he'd had a reputation for being one of the best, neatly dressed gentleman in London. It seem he had abandoned that for one of a more scruffier, rumpled and with the touch of the street urchin. His mahogany brown hair could not have been more messier if he'd kept running his hands continually through it, I later discovered that this was in fact what he had been doing. He gave me a warm and inviting grin, and I tried to return it as best I could. Athena was at my side now, looking over my shoulder at her grand-daughter.

"I ask again does she have a name?" I noted the patience in her tone and heard that it was repeated in a less so, voice by Christopher. "Well, what is she to be called?" the bark did nothing for my emotions, which still seem to possess a will of their own. Instead of naming my child, I found myself looking at Theodore. The politely raised voices becoming silent. It had all been so beautiful right down to our first meeting, so easy, so full of pleasure. Nothing in its brief length could have prepared me for what would lead up to this moment, since my wedding day not yet a year ago. Nothing could have prepared me for the years to come.

As the only child of elderly doting widow. I had been a little Duchess, not just in my own right but also by name. At the centre of every stage on which I performed with a skill gained only by a great teacher. My father having passed before I had even reached my fifth year and so leaving me to carry on the legacy of the Dukedom of Monrothe, he had been, so I was told a whimsical and at time flamboyant man who had a deep love for story-telling and music, and was frequently delighted by the aptitude I showed for the art. From my earliest days I had regularly trotted about, display my much admired and enviable skills on the pianoforte. Through mama sent me to The Badminton School in in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol. The newly established school was founded Miriam Badock and was just ten years old. The choice of education was usual for the time, and given my positon I had expected to send to a school in France or Switzerland, to be 'finished' as the term was. The lessons were much of the same as they'd been when I'd had a governess, French, music, painting. The list of, to me seemingly useless talents never changed. There was no knowledge to be gained from the institution. I longed for teachings of history, mathematics and philosophy, the true areas of intellect, but that would come later. When I had left I was one it's most accomplished students; there were few who could turn a blind eye to the natural instinct I had for absorbing information at such a rapid pace. After my leaving at age eighteen, I made my debut into society. I have lost count of the number of cotillions and balls my mother accompanied me too; but from what I do remember it was a great many. The Almack's rooms had probably been the most male-specimen filled of them all. I did not meet him there, our acquaintance began at the Vicountess Tonbrind's ball, late into the season of '75, and from there it had blossomed into not love, but in to one of affection that might have been parallel to something that might resemble that. Marriage was an option that came more of a convenience than anything else. In the later years of her life my mother's mind had begun to rapidly decline, her behaver had become increasingly erratic and hysterical, always badgering me on my prospects of marriage that in a desperate and almost childish act I hooked onto the first proposal, in order to get away from her alarming anxieties. The union benefited Theodore also, as the second son of an Earl he was given little chance of inheriting much from his family and would need to marry well in order to support himself. Our engagement lasted a year. While I was forced to bare the increasing turmoil's of my mother's behaver that I started to compare her too Miss Havisham from Dickins' novel. She did not glide about in the remains of a bridal gown and I was no ruined Estella any more than Theodore was Pip. The comparison between the two women made me realize the difference in how she acted in private and in public. In private she was colder, reserved and prone to snapping at me whereas in public, she would act with all the grace and sincerity of any mother of a bride-to-be. These acts both made me fearful and impatient towards her. Instead I found a new mother in Theodore's. Athena was thirty-three years my senior and was already a master of politics amongst society, with her sharp wit and even sharper tongue, I found her to be a commendable and reliable friend in those months before my wedding. I also found friend ship in my soon to be sister in-law, Martha. The countess of Hygarth, was like many of her breed in the American state of Massachusetts, rich. That was the truth plain and simple her marriage too Christopher had been for her money and not much else. She lacked the wit of Athena but made up for it in her practical and direct way of approaching things that would make her a valued alley in the years to come. Both ladies welcomed me into the family with open arms and graces. I quickly found Christopher to be a bash and prideful, the complete opposite of his brother.

The wedding finally occurred on the fifth of May 1876 possibly one of the most elaborate I'd been too, the gown, made by Worth was heavy with silk and jewels and I don't remember much of the day other than how splendid my bridegroom looked at the alter in the black cloth of his suit and waist coat in ivory.

"Are they always that red?" I was pulled out of my thoughts by Theodore's question. Him and the others were crowded around the bed were I had evidently placed the baby and were all looking at her with a mixture of love and uncertainty. "Always" was the reply the Dowager gave, "but this one's practically scarlet!" _Scarlet…Scarlet?_ I thought, _Scarlett._ Yes that would be her name. "Then that is what she'll be called" I declared much to the surprise of the others and so my child became Scarlett Millicent Jane Ryding-Hood.So what do you think for my first try, remember to review and to tell me on how to improve 


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